Bristol's New Sunny Digs

Sarah Palin's daughter Bristol -- star of "Dancing With The Stars" -- bought a home in Maricopa, Arizona.

No one is saying if this is just a winter getaway Alaskan or if Bristol is moving to Arizona full-time. The home is on a 3,900-square-foot property in a community called Cobblestone Farms. The house is five years old and originally sold for $329,560. Bristol got it for much less after it went into foreclosure by a previous owner, fixed up by the next owner, and then resold. Bristol bought it this month for $172,000 in cash.

 

To see more pictures of the home and the area - click here.

 

 

 
 
 

Joy Behar is an Idiot and C.S. Lewis Would Agree

The mid-day Mouth that Bored, otherwise known as Joy Behar (what a cynical first name for someone so joyless) is at it again.  She is critisizing Sarah Palin for telling Barbara Walters that she enjoys C.S. Lewis, one of the great authors of all time.

Kudos to Michael Flahrety of the Wall Street Journal for ripping into Behar for being a Boob.

Since Katie Couric first asked the question a couple of years back, journalists continue to pepper Sarah Palin with that classic ice-breaker: "So, what are you reading?" The subject came up again in a recent profile in the New York Times Magazine, and last week Barbara Walters returned to the question in interviewing Mrs. Palin as one of her "10 most fascinating people of 2010."


In both interviews Mrs. Palin cited C.S. Lewis as a favorite author she looks to for inspiration. This prompted talk-show host and comedienne Joy Behar of "The View" to deride Mrs. Palin and her choice of reading, asking: "Aren't those children's books?"

Lewis would likely have appreciated making Mrs. Palin's reading list. But he probably would have appreciated the questions about it even more. For Lewis, one of the best ways to know a person was to know what they read. He was convinced that books defined us and shaped our character. He realized that books did more than prepare people for interesting conversations with journalists—they prepare us to respond to the crises we encounter in our own lives.

Mrs. Palin is on the right track by giving C.S. Lewis a prominent place on her reading list. Yet Ms. Behar and other Palin critics have dismissed Lewis's work, forgetting that Lewis was a medieval and renaissance scholar at Oxford and the author of several brilliant Christian apologetics. Ms. Behar's dismissal of children's books as less than important makes her a modern-day Eustace, the type of bully who mocks readers of fairy tales as simpletons.

Lewis thought quite the opposite. He thought that fairy tales were the best way to convey truth for children and adults alike. He wrote about this quite often in his letters, and took no shame in reading fairy tales out loud in British pubs with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the epic "Lord of the Rings" trilogy.


Nowhere is this more poignantly expressed than in his dedication to Lucy Barfield in "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." "You are already too old for fairy tales," he wrote to the young Lucy, "but some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." Hopefully that day will come soon for Ms. Behar as well.

Flaherty give a brilliant homage to Lewis in his article, most of which I left out, but you can read by clicking here.

There Is No Crying in Politics! (For Women)

Sarah Palin said Friday there's a "double-standard" for female politicians who get all verklempt on the public stage.

"I'm sure that I would be knocked a little bit," predicted Palin on ABC's "Good Morning America" about what would happen if she welled up while giving a speech about opportunity and children. The tears that so often accompany House speaker-in-waiting John Boehner's remarks on these topics, in contrast, get a "pass," she said.

"I don't know if a woman would be given a pass necessarily," Palin told Robin Roberts during a sit-down at her Alaska home in wintery Wasilla.

Women in politics have to "be that much tougher," Palin added.





Says Jesse Singal at Boston.Com - Absolutely. Stereotypes still rule how we conduct politics in a lot of ways. Men have far more freedom to adopt different styles, from tough-guy cowboy to blubbering softie, while women, for the most part, are still expected to wear a veneer of upright seriousness, lest they be described as overly emotional.

Palin For RNC Chairwoman

This makes a lot of sense.

Many Republicans are urging Sarah Palin to run for president. But the Tea Party Nation wants her to vie for chairwoman of the Republican National Committee. The group’s founder, Judson Phillips, has sent a letter to the former Alaska governor asking her to go for it, Politico reports.

"In order for the tea party/conservative movement to be successful, we have to have someone conservative running the GOP," he told the news service. "She is the perfect candidate. If she does not try, I am afraid we will end up with just another establishment flunky running the party, and the [Republicans in name only] will control the party again."

Phillips says, "She has a track record of cutting wasteful spending, which has occurred under the watch of Michael Steele. Finally, she is simply a rock star. She can raise money like no one else out there that I can think of."

Sarah Gets Emotional About Trig